Get lost in High Country Maze near Mansfield
A couple of novice landscapers have conjured an artful garden from overgrown acreage in Victoria’s central highlands.
Creating art can be a solitary experience, so acclaimed Australian bird artist Tony Pridham wanted a place where he could interact with what he calls “the admirer”, his customers. What he didn’t realise was his studio-gallery would take root in a corner of an award-winning garden, complete with a hedge maze, that had gone to seed in Victoria’s central highlands. So Pridham and partner Nicky Goudberg, a north Queenslander whose background is in biology and rainforest ecology, had to do a crash course – self-taught – in cool-climate landscaping. “We whipped the gardens back into shape,” says Goudberg. “But I’m still learning box hedges.”
The High Country Maze is nestled into the lee of the mountains at Goughs Bay, an arm of Lake Eildon near Mansfield, 250km northeast of Melbourne. Its 2.5ha of walled gardens also feature avenues of mature trees and numerous rose beds among which are dotted fun topiaries, wire sculptures and pixie faces half-hidden in the foliage. A corner is devoted to frivolous pursuits: a giant chess board plus setups for bocce, boules, croquet, draughts and hopscotch. With the children duly occupied, you can explore at your leisure and should chance upon Pridham at work.
He’s lauded as Australia’s best painter of birds yet he shrugs off a family pedigree: Sidney Nolan was his great-uncle, but Pridham met him only a few times. “We’re totally different as artists. I never mention the connection but Nicky likes it.”
Pridham goes for hyper-realism, and the gallery walls are covered in representations of huge birds, including a hummingbird that is 52 times life-size. “We went to Ecuador just for that. I liked its aesthetic, the three colours. It was more than three months’ work.” There’s also a wedge-tailed eagle that won the 2017 Holmes Prize for realistic bird art. Another striking work is of a paradise parrot, which, Pridham says, was rated by 19th-century ornithologist John Gould as the most beautiful parrot. “It’s the only mainland Australian parrot we’ve lost.” He’ll paint birds that visit the garden, such as a wren that sat on a weeping cherry just outside the gallery door. And sometimes Trevor the magpie flies in to sit on the artist’s shoulder.
Pridham says he’s 100 per cent right-side of the brain whereas Goudberg is “very left. We actually make the perfect team.” They needed teamwork when they took over the property in March last year. Established two decades earlier by Tracey and Dean Shipley, it had won its share of awards before losing its edge. “Tracey was a really good gardener,” Goudberg says. (She is a qualified hairdresser and did the topiary.) “Her planting of these deciduous trees was spot-on. But it was so overgrown, we took Christmas trees off the top of the hedges with chainsaws.”
They replanted a lot of the beds and moved some plants to more advantageous positions. And they’re still tweaking, with an old second maze in the process of being turned into a flowering cherry garden. “We’re both fans of natural gardens,” Goudberg says, “but this isn’t a place to do natural plants.” The Australian landscape still features, however, with the highlands rising in the background.
A Buddhist who has lived in Nepal, Goudberg just may regard it as fate that she and Pridham got together in 2017. While running a lodge at nearby Mt Buller, she was painting as a pastime and was seeking “a mentor in fur and feathers. When I heard Tony was in Mansfield, I couldn’t believe my luck.”
They have a chook pen called Cluckingham Palace for eggs plus a vegetable garden and orchard to augment offerings in the licensed cafe. Do try the buttermilk scones. Or bring a picnic. Just don’t take it into the maze because it may turn into the world’s longest lunch if you’re anything like the co-owner. “I still get lost in there,” Pridham says.
The property is open every weekend (except February) and public holidays, and daily during Victorian school holidays.
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